17 players advanced to the Third Round of the World Cup
Three players won their matches with two wins: Sergey Karjakin (Russia), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland), and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France).
Many more matches ended with a 1.5-0.5 score. In arguably the most sensational one, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu (Germany) made a draw from the position of strength with Hikaru Nakamura (USA) and proceeded to the next round.
Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia) won the match against his compatriot Alexandr Predke, Dmitry Andreikin (Russia) defeated Rinat Jumabayev (Kazakhstan), Levon Aronian (Armenia) won against Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) won Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), Xu Xiangyu (China) defeated Ernesto Inarkiev (Russia), Wesley So (USA) bested Anton Demchenko (Russia), Pentala Harikrishna (India) beat Vladimir Fedoseev (Russia), Wang Hao (China) defeated Maxim Rodshtein (Israel), Vladislav Artemiev (Russia) won against Ivan Cheparinov (Georgia), Evgeny Tomashevsky (Russia) knocked out Chitambaram Aravindth (India), Anton Korobov (Ukraine) lost to Le Quang Liem (Vietnam), Aleksandr Rakhmanov (Russia) lost to Santosh Vidit (India), and Daniil Dubov (Russia) lost to Alireza Firouzja (Iran).
A big number of matches will once again be decided on tie-breaks.
Only two players managed to come back after losing the first game: Eltaj Safarli (Azerbaijan) defeated Nihal Sarin (India), and Wei Yi (China) managed to win as Black against David Anton Guijarro (Spain).
The following matches proceeded to tie-breaks after two draws: Ding Liren-Movsesian, Christiansen-Alekseenko, Svidler-Esipenko, Jakovenko-Jones, Giri-Najer, Tabatabaei-Xiong, McShane-Yuffa, Dominguez-Abasov, Grischuk-Bok, Sjugirov-Radjabov, Gelfand-Matlakov, Adhiban-Yu Yangyi, and Vitiugov-Huschenbeth.
The tie-breaks will be played on September 15.
The competition is organized by the Government of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug – Ugra, International Chess Federation (FIDE), Ugra Chess Federation, and Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation.
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FIDE official partner – JSCo “”.
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Text by Eteri Kublashvili